City University of New York system (CUNY)
Each institution in the system uses different athletic colors but the same academic hood lining pattern from the original College of the City of New York:
City College
New York
1847
Formerly “College of the City of New York”
Red and gold were the original colors of the Free Academy of the City of New York, but when the name of the institution was changed to the College of the City New York in 1866, students adopted lavender as the new school color. Initially the shade of lavender the college used was very light – almost pink – but over time the school color has brightened.
Black was often used as an accent color in the early years of the college, finally becoming an official second color by the 1910s.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): lavender (1895-1911); lavender/black (1912-1914); lavender (1915-1916); lavender/black (1917-1935)
The College of the City of New York was a client of academic costume manufacturer Cotrell & Leonard in 1896, according to a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in the 1896 Illio yearbook of the University of Illinois. As Cotrell & Leonard was also the depository of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), the IBAC had probably assigned a hood lining pattern to the College of the City of New York in 1895 or 1896. But no description of the college’s hood is given in that advertisement.
The first definitive and complete Intercollegiate Bureau description of the College of the City of New York’s hood is in a 1918 IBAC list where it is stated to have a lavender-colored liner. This description remains unchanged in all subsequent IBAC lists and today serves as the hood for all colleges and universities in the City University of New York (CUNY) system.